People

Founder of the Tennessee Vocational School for Colored Girls, J. Frankie Pierce was born during or shortly after the Civil War to Nellie Seay, the house slave of a Smith County legislator. Frankie Pierce received her education at the McKee…

Gideon J. Pillow, politician and general, was born in Williamson County and raised in Maury and Giles Counties. He received a classical education at local academies and graduated from the University of Nashville in 1827. He then read law and…

Within a year of his birth in 1892 in Tupelo, Mississippi, Abe Plough moved with his family to Memphis, where his father Moses operated a clothing and furnishings store. Abe Plough attended Market Street School where a teacher taught him…

James K. Polk, a native of North Carolina, served one term as United States president, 1845-49; won election seven times to Congress and presided over the U.S. House as its Speaker for the last four of his fourteen-year tenure (1825-39);…

Episcopal bishop and Confederate general Leonidas Polk was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, April 10, 1806. He briefly attended the University of North Carolina before entering the U.S. Military Academy. He graduated eighth in his class in 1827. He became…

Sarah Childress Polk, wife of the eleventh president of the United States, privately strengthened the role of first lady, acting as her husband's closest political ally while publicly dignifying her position in a manner her contemporaries held in highest esteem.…

William G. Pollard, nuclear physicist, Episcopal priest, and founder of Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), was a native of New York state. Pollard moved to Tennessee with his family at age twelve. He received his B.A. from the University of…

A Williamson County native, Edith Drake Pope worked as the business secretary (1893-1913) and editor (1914-32) of Confederate Veteran for the magazine's entire forty-year history. As editor, she faced mounting financial problems caused by increased death rate among Confederate veterans,…

Governor and President of Peabody Normal School James D. Porter was born in Paris, Tennessee, on December 7, 1828. An 1846 graduate of the University of Nashville, Porter was admitted to the bar in 1851 and elected to the state…

Elvis. The first name alone invokes images and sounds which spark instant recognition. While he may not have invented rock-n-roll, few can deny that Elvis Presley helped transform a musical fad into a national and international phenomenon. In the process,…

Frances W. Preston, a Nashville native who went to work for Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) at the age of twenty-one, serves now as that enterprise's worldwide president and CEO. While still a teenager Preston joined WSM as a receptionist, and…

Born in Maury County on April 1, 1900, James Percy Priest went to county public schools before attending classes at the teacher's college in Murfreesboro (now Middle Tennessee State University), George Peabody College for Teachers, and the University of Tennessee…

Wyatt Prunty is the author of six collections of poetry: The Times Between (1982), What Women Know, What Men Believe (1986), Balance as Belief (1989), The Run of the House (1993), Since the Noon Mail Stopped (1997), and Unarmed and…

Immortalized by three screen portrayals of his career, Walking Tall (1973), Walking Tall II (1976), and Walking Tall III: The Final Chapter (1977), McNairy County Sheriff Buford Pusser earned a reputation as a hard-nosed, no nonsense law officer who settled…

When Republican Congressman James H. Quillen decided not to seek reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee's First Congressional District in 1996, he ended more than thirty years of uninterrupted congressional service, a record in Tennessee political history.…

Episcopal Bishop Charles T. Quintard was born at Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Isaac Quintard and Clarissa Hoyt. In 1847 he received his M.D. degree from University Medical College, New York University, and worked for a year at Bellevue Hospital.…

Martha Ragsdale Ragland, reformer in political, health, and women's issues, was born near Russellville, Kentucky. She wanted to attend law school and later run for Congress, but the Great Depression put law school beyond her reach. She graduated from Vanderbilt…

Julius E. Raht, pioneer in the mining and smelting of copper in East Tennessee, was born in Dillenburg, Duchy of Nassau, Germany, on June 26, 1826. He attended Bonn University and the University of Berlin before immigrating to the United…

J. G. M. Ramsey made an indelible mark on the political, economic, and social development of antebellum East Tennessee. He was a physician, public official, religious leader, banker, railroad advocate, scholar, and staunch secessionist, one of the most accomplished East…

Tennessee's preeminent poet and arguably the South's most influential literary critic and teacher, John Crowe Ransom was born in Pulaski and educated at Vanderbilt, where he later taught English and became the leading member of the Fugitives, whose magazine contained…